[I] love to make ice cream. But when I bought my first ice cream maker, just several years ago, I had dueling ideas about where things might go from there — would I be making all sorts of the ice creams, gelato and sorbets of my dreams, or would the […]
[C]learly — as one could see from the name of this blog — I am a scone fan. I’ve written of my love and admiration of scones here before, but I don’t have a problem making a new scone recipe to remind me of everything good — and great — […]
[I]’ve never made a marshmallow. It seemed like one of those impossible kitchen possibilities, like spinning your own cotton candy or pulling taffy. But I have EATEN a homemade marshmallow, made by my confectionary/culinary/baking-maven friend, Elaine, and it was a heavenly thing, a world apart from the store-bought versions. It […]
[E]ach year, I’m determined to get at least a little closer to visiting New Orleans, if only via a Crayola-yellow box and 48 ounces of hot cooking oil. We’re talking beignets here, those puffy little squarish French doughnuts made famous by Cafe Du Monde, the French Quarter landmark coffee stand […]
[I] have made countless loaves of banana bread over the years, always hoping for THE one…the one that will end my search for the perfect version. Then, I can just stop trying and always have MY go-to method at the ready. I’ve made banana breads that have ended up too […]
[I] almost opted out of the Black Forest Chocolate Cookies on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule. I had a number of deadlines and other cooking projects on my docket, and thought I might be too busy. Then, I thought: Too busy to bake cookies? That doesn’t even make sense! Looking […]
[I] love my first paging through a cookbook, particularly one as visually and deliciously stunning as “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking†by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito (2008). Usually, this initial “walkthrough†establishes my “must-make†list. Without question, the Butterscotch Pudding Tarts in the book has always been number one. […]
[T]he first food gift I remember was wrapped in aluminum foil and topped with an adhesive-backed bow. Cinnamon rolls…jillions of them, all over the countertops in their silver packets, awaiting Christmastime delivery to family, friends, neighbors. My mom got up in the wee hours of the morning to do this, […]
[O]ccasionally (well, perhaps more often than occasionally), I become mesmerized by little cooking videos on the Internet. You know the ones, where an overhead camera view captures the step-by-step process (often sped up to keep the video short) that makes whatever is being made look like a snap. Maybe sometimes […]
[I]’ve written here recently of the October Northern California wildfires, one of the strangest, saddest times I’ve experienced in a while. For those in the fires’ paths of destruction, it was a sheer nightmare. For those of us on the nearby periphery, it was a surreal time, holding in place […]